As a young Founder and CEO, I often get asked about time management, stress, and how I manage to take care of myself in addition to taking care of my business. After years of burning the midnight oil and averaging 4-ish hours of sleep a night max, I nearly burned myself out. In one short year, I took over 210 flights, worked with amazing clients all over the globe, and was able to grow my business extremely quickly.

From the outside looking in, I had it all put together.

But actually, I was exhausted and stressed out nearly all the time. That’s when I realized you have to slow down to speed up.

One fateful day about a year ago in New York City, I was drowning in meetings. I had 15 of them back-to-back. Just as I was about to hit my point of ‘over capacity’, yet another meeting popped up. It was an 8-minute meeting put on my calendar by my friend and colleague entitled, “Ready, Set, Pause”. My friend and colleague at Digital Royalty, Alana, knew about my hectic day. After seeing a little window in my schedule, she encouraged me to put on my headphones and use those 8 minutes to listen to a couple of songs from a Spotify playlist we had created. It’s amazing how little things can make big changes. I took her advice and relaxed as I listened to the music. To my surprise, after the two songs were over I felt calm, energized, and ready to tackle the rest of my day. That quick pause allowed me to release the gradual tension that had been building with each meeting and to take a hiatus from my stress and anxiety.

From that day on, an 8-minute ‘Ready, Set, Pause’ has held a permanent spot in my daily agenda.

This little trick fascinated me so much that my team and I wanted to learn more. We took the concept to Dr. Mark Guadagnoli, who holds a dual PhD in Cognitive Psychology and Human Performance. He has taught at Harvard University, Arizona State, UCLA, USC, and UNLV. Since introducing this Ready, Set, Pause concept to Dr. Guadagnoli, my team and I have been working with all types of individuals, of all ages, to study the effects of Ready, Set, Pause.

In one setting, Dr. Guadagnoli gave a group of college students little instruction, other than to make sure to take a dedicated pause every day. The results were incredible. Using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a metric, the students gave the Ready, Set, Pause concept an over 90% approval score (of out 100). The NPS is a metric commonly used by companies to gauge the strength of a company’s customer relationships. The higher the number, the more likely they are to share their opinion with family and friends. This number is powerful—people don’t typically recommend unsatisfying experiences to their loved ones. These results inspired my team and I to include the Ready, Set, Pause concept into our Digital Royalty University classes. We’ve found people retain new things better if they take a few moments to digest what they’ve learned and aren’t overwhelmed by information overload.

My daily Ready, Set, Pause routine, coupled with my commitment to sleep my way to the top has made a huge impact on my stress level, how I communicate, and the way I make important decisions. Taking the time to take care of yourself is the one of the most important things you can do for your business. Sometimes, the best way to speed up is to slow down.

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James

Awesome tip Amy, I’ll definitely try it!

http://www.callboxinc.co.uk/ Oliver Scott

I’ve had my own ways to deal with stress but your philosophy seems to work better, I believe. With all those meetings, a quick yet vigorous relaxation can really get that adrenaline pumping for the rest of the day. Nothing can stop you now!

http://Under30CEO.com/ Jared O’Toole

I’m a big believer in taking plenty of time to slow down and relax throughout the day. I’ve often noticed that it really doesn’t impact my overall output by the end of the day especially when you learn to slow down and remove wasteful activities that clog many of our daily routines.

Daniel DiPiazza

@JaredOToole:disqus do you have any specific rituals for this practice?

http://under30ceo.com MattWilsontv

Slacker. I’ll never forget the day you didn’t answer my call because you didn’t want your cereal to get soggy.

http://under30ceo.com MattWilsontv

Daniel– I’m too scatterbrained day to day, so if I don’t ready, set, pause, I’ll fall on my face.

I like to re-set every morning, focus on my goals, and prioritize, I also try to do it at lunch. Yoga or a workout around 5PM when I’m least productive helps me pause too.

Amy, I love your article and thanks for the reminder to ready, set, pause. I have experienced this myself and it’s amazing how 5-10 minutes of relaxation can really set your mind in a “tackle ready” mindset!!